On Gifts
by lloydskywalkers
Summary: Edna Walker's son isn't related to her by blood, but she's never loved anyone more. Even if waiting for him to come home frays her nerves apart, it's worth it. (Slight spoilers for season 9 at the end!)


**Writing about someone other than Lloyd for once, the shock! This is mainly a birthday gift for** **ABCSKW123-IX, one of the nicest people I've met and who's endlessly fun to talk to (even if they do write crippling** **angst).**

 **I've been meaning to write something about the ninja's parents forever, and ever since I saw TLNM I've loved the little scene where Jay talks about his mom and sea shells - so I figured I'd go ahead and actually try to write it for this :'D**

* * *

Edna Walker's son isn't related to her by blood, but she's never loved anyone more.

It's an odd situation, perhaps, but by the time Edna's holding Jay in her arms for the first time she's already fallen head-over-heels in love with this child, and she's ready to move mountains for him.

Its a bit harder to do that in reality, when Ed and Edna aren't the richest couple around - enough to live comfortably, but to live in a trailer in a junkyard. She worries, the first few months, how Jay will do here.

She shouldn't have bothered. Jay doesn't mind their trailer, doesn't mind living amongst piles of metal and scrap. He finds ways to entertain himself, teaches himself to build things instead of break them, and thrives off of the attention they give him. For a four year-old, it's enough.

But keeping her bright son confined to the junkyard for his entire childhood is a thought that makes her stomach turn, so she scrapes and saves the money up until she can take all three of them to the coast for a weekend.

It's difficult to spend hard-earned money that quickly, but the look of open delight on Jay's face when he sees the ocean for the first time, the way he runs back and forth chasing seagulls while shrieking happily, makes it worth it.

Ed is the one who takes him out into the water first, who shows him how to watch the currents and is careful to keep him from getting swept away in the riptides. Her husband's careful warnings are lost as Jay immediately falls in love with the water, splashing and swimming and giggling as he pushes sopping wet hair from his forehead.

Edna, for her part, prefers to stay on the beach, where she can find the wave-worn shells gleaming in the afternoon sun, collecting shades of white and orange and purple of all sizes.

She walks along the edge of the beach for a while, picking out the different shells and listening to her son and husband laughing in the water. _It's worth it_ , she thinks, as she takes a seat on the sand. It's worth swapping out cheap milk for creamer, cutting corners on the electricity bills and sewing that jacket back together instead of buying a new one.

A small shadow suddenly stands over her, and Edna opens her eyes, blinking. Jay is standing in front of her, his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright, curly auburn hair flecked with sand as it dries in the wind.

"Hello, sweetheart."

"I found this!" Jay says excitedly, pushing a shell, still dripping wet and half-covered in sand, into her hand. "It's for you, for your collection!"

Edna leans forward, brushing the sand off the shell and holding it up in the sun to study it. She makes a great show of it, studying every angle as she purses her lips, _ooh_ -ing and _aw_ -ing as Jay giggles.

"I must say," she says, smiling at him. "I've never seen a more perfect specimen. This is, by far, the best shell I've ever been given. But don't you want to keep it for yourself?"

Jay shakes his head, sending droplets of seawater flying. "Nuh-uh," he says. "It's for you! I found it _just_ for you."

Edna smiles again, grabs her soaking wet son in her arms, and hugs him tightly, ignoring his squirming as sand sticks to her hair.

 _Definitely worth it,_ she thinks. For Jay's smile, it's always worth it.

* * *

Jay makes a habit of bringing things home. Odds and ends, anything he thinks they'll like or find interesting. But mainly his inventions, half-cobbled ideas barely held together by duct tape. She watches as they grow and change, angles becoming neater and gears tighter, Jay's careful hands barely held steady in the wake of his brilliant mind. She watches _him_ grow - or rather, she tries to. Jay is not the kind of kid to hold still for more than thirty seconds, and even then he's still shifting from foot to foot, full of nervous energy. It's like trying to bottle lightning, keeping Jay in one place. He's always moving, always thinking, always ready with a response, his sense of humor already making itself legendary in their house.

And he's always eager to please, always looking to her for approval. It's sweet until it begins to worry her. Jay places far too much value on other's opinions of himself, and too little value on his own. She sees it in the way he nervously watches the other kids, the way he'll halt mid-sentence during one of his rants and flush, shutting down as he realizes how loudly he's been speaking.

Edna does her best to discourage that. Jay is bright and intelligent and full of life - that's a good thing, not something to be ashamed of. She encourages him every step she can, stays up to all hours of the night helping him with his inventions, and makes sure she's always there to catch him if something goes wrong.

She's not a perfect mother, not by a long shot, but oh, she tries for Jay.

* * *

Jay is scarcely a teenager when he goes with the son of the First Spinjitzu Master.

The old man who encouraged him when he was so young wants to train him, to teach him things most people could only ever dream of knowing. He wants her son to be a ninja.

She's tempted to laugh at him, and then to emphatically tell him _no_. Jay is her boy, her world, and being a ninja doesn't sound anywhere near safe. It sounds dangerous and daring and full of potential to get hurt, the guarantee of long nights spent lying awake in worry.

But then Jay wants Jay to be a ninja, too. He wants to help, he tells her. He wants to help people, to save his country, to learn how to harness the power that lies inside of him. Because it's always been there, she sees that now - dormant, maybe, but the lightning's always been in Jay, bright and bursting like trails of stars across a horizon.

She can't deny him that.

And he'll have friends, too. Others, barely older than him, who have been recruited as well. She can't help the warm feeling that fills her chest as Jay tells her about a boy named _Cole_ who is strong and funny and _gets me, mom, it's so easy to talk to him, I've never met anyone like that._

There are other students as well, he assures her. A boy named Zane who is quiet and strange, and a fourth student the Sensei hasn't spoken much of yet. Jay doesn't think he's been invited yet, but they've already got earth and ice, and isn't that cool enough already?

She could never keep him from that, so she lets him go, helping him pack and watching in amusement as he struggles with the dark robes of a ninja for the first time. It hurts her a bit, but she's always known Jay was meant for bigger things than their tiny junkyard. Jay deserves the world, and she hopes these people, the Sensei, can give it to him.

 _Your son is very special_ , the Sensei tells her before they leave, his eyes old and wise. _He's going to do great things._

Edna resists the urge to snort. She's known that since day one.

* * *

Jay comes back in bright blue and glinting silver, and the colors remind Edna of the ocean.

"Not the ocean, mom, lightning," Jay laughs, as he shows her his weapons. "I'm the blue ninja, which is the elemental master of lightning - which is _way_ cooler than Kai, by the way, who - oh! Mom, he has a sister, her name is Nya, you _have_ to meet her-"

Edna can only laugh at Jay's unfiltered happiness.

She does end up meeting the girl named Nya, who's as bright and clever as Jay and equally skilled when it comes to machines. She's a lovely girl, with a quick tongue and fire for a spine, and Edna wonders if her son is even aware of how quickly he falls for her.

She meets the boy named Kai, too, Nya's brother with _literal_ hands of fire, and she finally meets Cole and Zane as well.

Later she'll meet a boy with red eyes named Lloyd, and a silver-haired girl named Pixal, and her reaction will always be the same. These are Jay's friends, but he's making them more than that. These are the people Jay _wants_ , pulling them into his family, and Edna promises to watch over each of them as if they were her own.

It's hard to do, because once they start that life of fighting, they don't really stop. Battle after battle and villain after villain seem to crop up as if on clockwork, and Jay barely has the time to call her before he falls asleep, his soft snores echoing over the scratchy phone line. Edna waits a while before hanging up, listening to the sounds of Jay's friends in the background, the reassuring sound of her son breathing. She doesn't know the next time she'll hear from him, and she doesn't want to waste a minute.

It's worth it, though, on the days he comes back happy.

(She doesn't like to dwell on the days he comes back sad - the day he collapses on their couch crying, barely able to tell her of Zane, the day he calls her in a panic, asking her for every water-proof solution they have, the day he comes back and says nothing, his eyes haunted but drenched in relief as he holds Nya's hand.)

Their team is battered and beaten so often they live in almost-permanent bruises, but they find a way to come through, saving the city time and again. She watches Jay on the television, her eyes always glued on the bright blue figure among the flashes of green and red and black. She wears the carpet to threads with her pacing, rearranges the bones in Ed's hand too often.

But Jay comes through. He always does. And Edna will always wait anxiously until her son's quick footsteps race up the trailer steps, until she's able to take his face in her hands and assure herself that he's alive, he's safe, and he's happy. As long as he's happy, and as long as he keeps bringing her shells from the odd beaches they find in their travels, Edna is happy too.

* * *

And then he doesn't, and Edna's world falls apart.

There's not much more to say than that. Edna doesn't remember falling to her knees when she gets the news, but she knows she must have. It's the worst blow she could've received, and the knowledge that no one's coming home this time hurts worse than she could've imagined in her greatest nightmares.

She tries to hold herself together, for Ed's sake. For the sake of Nya and Lloyd, for the haunted look in their eyes she knows mirrors hers.

But it's not until she's sitting in front of the television again, her phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip, the message from Nya spelling out what she'd barely hoped possible with the sound of Lloyd Garmadon begging them not to quit in the background, that she lets herself start breathing again.

* * *

Edna gets the news at the crack of dawn, half-stumbling out of bed as she realizes she has seventeen missed calls from Nya. There's a text there as well, with words she's almost scared to believe, can barely read through blurring eyes.

Ed is blearily trailing behind her in confusion as she shoves her way to the television, flicking it on and staring, her fingers pressed to her mouth. The image flickers on, revealing a burning city and massive beasts, and-

Edna's heart stops.

"We have to go," she says, blinking back the start of tears. "We have to go to Ninjago City _now_. He's there, Ed!"

She's barely got her shoes on, jacket pulled haphazardly over her shoulders as she reaches for the door, keys already jingling in her hand.

"Come _on_ , Ed!" she calls wildly, practically rattling the old door off it's hinges as she opens it. "We have to-"

She stops dead. There's someone in the doorway.

There's a smattering of dirt and dust painting over his freckles, his auburn hair tangled and filthy, streaked with dirt and ash. He's got a purpling bruise spreading from his lower jaw, mixing with the high color in his cheeks. Bright eyes meet hers, soft and hopeful and anxious all at once.

"Hey, mom," Jay says, weakly. "I'm home."

He's only brought himself home this time, but clutched tightly in her arms, her tears streaking through his hair, Edna can't think of anything she'd love more.


End file.
